Automatic guitar strumming with Arduino Uno and chopsticks

Arduino Team — January 31st, 2018

If you like to make music, but don’t consider yourself particularly talented, YouTuber Make It And Fake It has come up with an innovative solution.

Her device uses an Arduino Uno, along with a hobby servo motor to move a pair of chopsticks that holds the pick. This means that the guitar can literally strum itself, and thanks to a small control box, she can even select from one of three rhythm patterns.

If you’re wondering what this could be used for, the answer comes at 1:40 in the demonstration video, where Make It And Fake It is shown drinking tea, playing another instrument, and even texting her mom while still producing music from the guitar. Code for the build can be found on GitHub.

@MeanMachin, imagine, you can have different stroke time while playing (actually, that was shown in video, look at 1:17), so creating this effect with potentiometer would be pretty hard, even impossible.